Core C Project Leader: Wall, Dennis P. Project Summary / Abstract The study of miRs and their regulatory control has led to impressive bioinformatic innovations with respect to algorithm design, target prediction, evolutionary canalization and divergence, and much more. What has not happened and is unique to this plan is the combination of these informatics advances with comprehensive and integrated functional analysis in the intact animal. Core C, through its interactions with Core B and the three driving biological projects targeting regulatory influence of miRs on sleep, associative learning and memory, and the neuromuscular system will provide this innovation in a model organism where neural circuits can be analyzed at many levels from behavior to cellular and molecular details. Specifically, Core C will develop the informatics infrastructure necessary to store and analyze all experimental data coming from these 4 sectors of the center proposal and, through reciprocal design, enable fast characterization of the functional impacts of specific miRs to study the impact on target networks and to determine instances of functional convergence. Core C will deliver the tools necessary for each driving project to form hypotheses about the influence of specific miRs on gene networks through microRNA recognition elements (MREs) in target mRNAs, and help steer the design of new experiments that have the highest likelihood of revealing the mechanisms of regulatory control that impact phenotype.